Newsletter 2/18 - Apology
Dear Reader, the newsletter 2/18 has been sent out a couple of days ago. And through an oversight, a draft version of the newsletter was accidentally posted to the membership. We apologise for this mishap and hope you found anyway great value of the information provided.
SwissCham April 2018
"Gruezi" from the Desk of SwissCham
Dear Members and Friends of SwissCham Australia
2018 started with some big events which have been extremely successful. First we had the Pipilotti Rist event at the MCA and then we were able to celebrate the winners of the Swiss Business Award 2017.
Needless to say this event was not only enjoyed by the board of SwissCham, the sponsors, the winners of the awards and of course of all Members and their guests, but it was a worth while celebration of outstanding contributions of Swiss Business in Australia. And with no doubt, all three winners have a global impact with their high quality products, solutions and the results in their field of research.
On March 28th, we held our annual AGM. HWL Ebsworth provided the facility and some light refreshment were offered after the AGM. Our Chairman presented his annual report and the progress we made in the last 12 months. Certainly the biggest challenge is to retain our valued members. With a more diversified event offering and more services we plan to offer, we will be ready for the challenges ahead. While we still have recorded a slight negative annual financial result, the improvement from the year before was significant.
As reported in the last newsletter, we have been able to win Vicki Mullen from SwissRe to the board, and already some great energy has been created. I am also very pleased to inform the membership, that Stefano Solferini, has after one year absence, due to some international secondment, rejoined the board of SwissCham. Stefano is like Vicki, well connected and both will be bring a huge value to the further quality growth of SwissCham.
We have plenty of great events lining up.
A highlight is certainly the visit of a Swiss Parliamentary Group. Two Business Breakfasts, in Sydney and Melbourne with some high profile members of the Chamber have been arranged (by personal invitation only).
On May the 3rd, our next board room lunch with the Hon Paul Fletcher MP, Federal Member for Bradfield and Minister for Infrastructure and Cities is on the agenda.
Cyber Security is now a hot topic in Australia. After all the bungles and problems around this topic, we thought an event would be of high interest. So we are offering an event on the 18th April (still a few spots available). Interestingly the membership has so far not expressed a high interest to attend. This is very interesting, when you know, that Australia just introduced new laws about breaches in Cyber Security, which must be taken seriously and need in many cases need to be reported to the Authorities. For more info click ===> here.
If you like to know more, visit out website about the coming events. (go to ===> www.swisscham.com.au/events)
Yours,
Martin G Scarpino
CEO, SwissCham